Brief Story Line
Colter Shaw (Justin Hartley - Senior Year, Smallville TV serie etc) was a survivalist with great tracking skills who worked as a tracker to find missing persons and collect the reward. He mostly worked on jobs found by his handlers, the couple Teddie (Robin Weigert - Smile, Sons of Anarchy TV series etc) and Velma (Abby McEnany - Work in Progress TV series etc) who also provided background information on the cases, though sometimes he would work on his own.
During his jobs, Colter would need some technical support such as going through phone records, CCTV and other stuff where he enlisted the help from Bobby (Eric Graise - Step Up: High Water TV series etc). Every now and then, Colter was assisted by the lawyer Reenie Greene (Fiona Rene - I Know What You Did Last Summer TV series etc) to get him out of trouble with law enforcement.
In few cases, there were times where his past seemed to catch up with Colter and made him quite intrigued in finding out what really happened.
End of Brief Story Line
OK, got to admit that I was interested in the story as it was something rather unique as compared to the usual mystery or catching criminals stories. This series focused instead on finding the persons who had been missing, but if it involved saving the person from people who held them captive, then Colter would have to fight them off as well. So I think the classification of action drama was the most suitable one as there was some drama around the people in need of help and some actions.
However, as I have been very accustomed to watch series with large story arc, I found this one to be lacking. I did mention above that sometimes the past caught up with Colter, but it was really more like a background and was rarely touched until the last three episodes. Hence the larger story did not feel explored enough and made this felt like standard procedural series with different case in each episode. There was no major stuff that made me could not stop watching.
Nevertheless, I still enjoy the story and the way Colter track the people using his skills and also his interaction with others using his obvious charm and good looks. And though it did not have any direct continuity between each episode, but the case in general was pretty interesting and time sensitive. My favorite was definitely the 12th episode and I think episode 9 where it involved a deep investigation. I noticed during the opening credit that this was based on the novel The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver who had written many best sellers including The Bone Collector which was adapted into a movie back in 1999 starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.
The cast was OK to my opinion, especially Justin Harlety who I think was how the writer intended him to be, but I felt that Teddi and Velma were not given enough time to excel like Bobby and Reenie. Perhaps their presence would be felt more in the second season. Yes in case you are wondering, this series has been renewed and maybe will air in 2025. There were plenty of guest stars in each episode but the ones who really caught my attention was Peter Stormare (John Wick: Chapter 2 etc), Melissa Roxburgh (Manifest TV series etc) and most surprising of all was Jensen Ackles (Supernatural TV series etc) who gave a much needed color to an otherwise rather serious series. I hope we can see more of him in the future.
Overall this was a series that was quite interesting with a nice enough story and unique "case" solving. Critics seemed to enjoy this as shown by its high ratings and I guess audience were very receptive as proven by its swift renewal. I personally like the way the case was solved and Colter's interaction, though I would have probably more entertained if the large story arc was more explored which would excite me with each passing episode. Let's see if the second season would be more to my preference. So if you like the mostly case by case series with attributes I mentioned, then you could give this 13-episode series a try.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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